a builder was a-building

Nothing much happened today except I got on a bicycle first time in years. It's a fancy one - gears and handlebar brakes. Not at all like bikes of my childhood, where you needed to pedal backwards to brake. It will take some time before I attempt a big ride, but it'll happen one day.

Builders are doing something to the roof of a local shopping center. I just like the geometry of this view.

Bonus track is a very short movie of Timur, taken both above and below the water surface. I must say Kirill's little camera handles this switch pretty well.

and the name is...

Looks like Corralejo is even smaller than I thought. Couple of days ago I wrote that I can't find the name of the lady who makes wind toys. Today we went to salsa lesson (which proved to be bachata, but never mind), and who turns up in the middle of it in bright yellow dress? So now I know her name - Claudine Macquart. By another coincidence, piles of magazine where the article about her was published and that I threw away were both in the bar where the lesson happened and in the little photo shop where we dropped in after lesson to have a passport-size photo done.

We stopped for drinks in a little bar that only opened a couple of days ago. I am pretty sure that rattan table is supposed to have glass top. Well, it didn't :) But I like the way lensbaby treated its pattern.

watery day

what a lovely splash

wind toys

Now we have a few of those recycled-art wind toys, bought from a charming lady at the artisan market in Corralejo. Since I first saw those rotors at the market, I keep seeing them everywhere - there are trees made of them in some gardens, and a whole plantation on one of the roundabouts.

She is one dedicated lady. I saw a small article about her in one of the many free local magazines, but, in spirit of keeping clatter to minimum, I threw it into a recycling container and, of course, immediately forgot her name. I will ask next week.

Both still photo and the video taken with Lensbaby.

dunas y playas otra vez

 One of the things that we wanted to do yesterday at the dunes was to make a new "fuerte-zumba" userpic for Kirill's profile at zumba.com. We weren't particularly successful, picture above approaches the desired effect, but we'll have to come back and do it again some day

energetic sunday - dunes

 Today we finally went to the "big beaches" (playas grandes), about three kilometers from the edge of Corralejo. Ocean was a bit choppy and red flags were on, but we didn't really go there for the ocean. Those beaches are backed by white sand dunes, where our kids (and not only they) like to jump, roll and run downhill
Which is precisely what they (and Kirill) did for a while.

market at Puerto del Rosario and plants

Today we finally went to the "La Biosfera" market at Puerto del Rosario. It's on Saturdays, an the first floor of their enormous bus station. I don't know what was the original plan for the station, but normally it feels very empty and causes you to think about whether humankind is lonely in the universe and things of that nature. On Saturdays it's somewhat busier, but only somewhat. Truth to be told, we overslept, and came there by almost midday. Maybe the market was a lot busier before, but not at that point. There were vegetables, cheese and ham, bread, and one stall with plants. Guess what I bought then :)
Plants were surprisingly cheap, I paid just a euro for this little crassula plant. We also were looking at a cactus with absolutely huge thorns, but decided against it, as our intention was to shop some more. The stall holder handed us the plant, said "mil de euro" and giggled at his own joke. I tried to ask in a very shaky spanish if he's there every saturday (we really set our hearts on that cactus), to which he cheerfully replied at machine-gun type of speed. Hm, thought I, I take it as a yes.

morning coffee (and yet another lens report)

Pictures are just to demonstrate our morning coffee progress and test an explanation that I found yesterday for the my lens problem. In this helpful page Martin Pot from Australia describes what he's going to do about his old lens with the same problem. While I am not brave enough to go inside an L-series lens with a screwdriver (which is what he ultimatly did), an advice that I extracted from his post was that the lens would still work if the aperture was open. So I tried and it does work, as you can see in those picture. 4 is not the best aperture for this lens, at least for my copy of it (veeery soft and a lot of color leaking), but it is a great relief to see that something still can be done with this lens before I either break it completely with my own fixing effort of decide to go for an expensive option and fix it at official Canon place.

new shoes and lensbaby

following the sad demise (or at least temporary incapacitation) of my 24-105 lens which I was using more or less permanently, I am now left with two choices lens-wise. One is my old sigma (not full-frame lens, ok for isolations but not good for scenery, street photos, portraits, etc) and Lensbaby. My new shoes were taken with the later. The aperture I inserted sadly lacks marking, but it is between 8 and 16, perhaps 12. It is a fairly small opening anyway, but you can see that lens still produces a very distinct sweet spot and obvious out-of-focus area. I think it is especially visible on the second pic - focus on the upper shoe, spherical aberrations on the lower one. As for me, this is a nice effect, but I strongly suspect stocks won't take it. I will try though.

Puerto del Rosario - colors

Pictures from Puerto del Rosario - this time with more color in them. The shoes I bought yesterday I tried today at salsa class, btw - they are a bit stiff in a way new shoes tend to be, but work fine, good balance.

I find this yellow of postman (and postwoman) scooters very touching

Puerto del Rosario - white hot

We went to Puerto del Rosario today, to get more bits of paperwork done. We haven't done what we intended, but got forms, a list of docs to bring over next time and an assurance that we are not needed there all four of us, just one representative will do. So we considered it a success.

When we started from home, it was a bit overcast. It started to heat up when we walked to a bit - in the direction of the shopping center (Las Rotondas), because I needed some dancing shoes. Inside the center it was cool and on the darkish side, and easy to forget how hot it is outside. Which it was

El Cotillo and dying lens

Today we went to El Cotillo on a bus — which was large, comfortable, air-conditioned and on time. I don’t know why it surprises me, but it does. I think it was the same bus both ways, at least it was the same driver.

We’ve been to the village before, so, led by imprinting, we turned right as we came to the ocean, and walked to the “Los Lagos” (lakes) beach that is sort of to the north of the village. It’s a series of nicely enclosed calm lagoons, white sand and black volcanic stone, with easy sandy access to the water. Only after we came back I’ve checked and found out that there are much longer beaches if you head in the opposite direction, but they are exposed and not calm — better for surfing than for swimming.

getting paperwork done

Over our first week here we've achieved an important thing - we've got possibly the biggest bit of paperwork done. That was obtaining a "residencia" - green paper of A4 format per head, stating that we live where we live. Apparently, we are supposed to carry it around. Used to be a photo-card that fits in a standard card slot in any wallet, but that was changed to a floppy large piece of paper with no photo which doesn't fit any. Doesn't make a lot of sense, but there you go. It will probably change again, hopefully we'd be able to do our own paperwork by then - this time we had to engage professional help

We have to do a few more pieces - maybe next week.

Pictures are more or less random.

Cup of coffee in a cafe in Puerto del Rosario, while we waited for Sabrina, who went off to the bank to pay the official fees.

selling my car

this is a somewhat boring post, but I thought I'd better do it for a record, plus it might be useful to somebody. I never sold a car before, and was intimidated by the idea. But I had to, I thought black just won't work on Fuerteventura, it'll be like a furnace.

Kitesurfing

Yesterday we finally found the way down to the beach - not the town beach, but one at the beginning of natural reserve of dunes of Corralejo. When it's windy, it's full of free-range kitesurfers. It was windy yesterday.

I never observed the tricks they do before - I was under the impression that they just go to and fro very fast. I was wrong. Maybe the weather was appropriate yesterday, maybe it's something to do with the fact that there's kitesurfing championship going on the other end of the island, but they were doing jumps, twist and turns, you name it. There was also a fair bit of falling going, too. Shame that my biggest zoom's in a container somewhere, but I caught what I could.

Those guys are crazy, and I mean it in a nicest possible sense. I want to have a go too, one day. I probably would never able to jump like that, but I will try

Artesan market in Corralejo

Today, and every sunday, there was an "Artesan market" (Mercado de artesanía) in commercial centre Campanario. What is for sale are mostly useless, though often desirable - volcanic stone jewelry, trinkets, bags, more jewelry, etc. There were some food for sale - local cheeses, bread - but not much. Apparently you need to go to Puerto del Rosario on Fridays for food market - which I fully intend to do.

What I especially noticed where those wind toys made out of plastic bottles.

first and last

My last week was full of "last" things - last zumba lesson with Luisa, last salsa with Nunchi and Udoka, last casual lunch in Saffron Walden, even last trip to its Library and recycling center, etc. Granted, apart from possibly last two items, the other things can still occur if I come over for a visit, but it felt sad all the same. I will miss all that, even the recycling center

Today it is a different story altogether - day of "firsts"

First litrona bottle shared in the patio

Race for Life - Cambridge

we came to Cambridge today to spot two friends that were taking part in Race for life event. Needless to say, we were sort of late, as we tend to be, so Kirill managed to spot one, me - none. What we did see was a lot of ladies of all ages, all without exception looking lovely in their (mostly) pink outfits, enjoying a run, jog or stroll under sunshine. I liked it a lot. I like it when anybody can join, and here it is pretty much the case - unlike marathon, for example, where even strolling the whole distance is a huge effort. Granted, it's ladies-only event, but apart from that, very inclusive

Grassington

First time (and the only one until a week ago) we visited Grassignton with our friend, on almost the first drive around in the UK ever, fifteen years ago. I don't remember much from the first visit, apart from some bunting across the streets.

This time there was no bunting, but the village (or town if you insist on being correct) is almost too pretty. We went for an extremely short walk to the Linton Falls, then a little way along the river Wharfe and then turned back into the village (yeah, town, I know) in search of a cafe

I saw some activity on the river and couldn't figure out what it was - and now wikipedia tells me they are restoring hydroelectric plant there. Well done, I say.

Back from Yorkshire

just came back from Yorkshire after a couple of days of going around places we saw first time fifteen years ago. Yorkshire holidays always turn out to be nice in low-key way - no big discoveries, no big disappointments either. We stayed in Leeds and went for drives. I do believe I broke some rules, turning where I was not at all supposed to - and doing it twice in as many days, due to our navigator's directions. I just hope they'll let it go if I am caught on camera.

Below are some almost randoms pics

Difficult to spell but easy to pronounce - Knaresborough. Easy on the eye, too.

I spend a while waiting for  a train to appear on the viaduct, given up and we started moving down to the river level when it finally did, and I wasn't really ready of course. There's a picture on another camera, though, taken with lensbaby, but I haven't seen how it turned out yet.